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The Trade Me Revolution Tour Hits Town

The Trade Me exec team were in Auckland today with the “Trade Me Revolution Tour”, bringing insight and infotainment to an audience of advertisers and marketers.

Lest you get the impression from the event title that this was a musical extravaganza complete with high-octane rock stars and screaming hordes of fans — well, it was (except for the music), but in a restrained Trade Me sort of way.

On the podium, five masters of the digital universe, keen to fan the flames of online obsession. First up was Trade Me CEO Jon Macdonald, adding some historical perspective to proceedings by leading us through a decade of Trade Me history. We were treated to pix of how the front page of Trade Me used to look, back in the day (from 1999 to 2009), along with some sneak peeks at possible makeovers for 2010. We were also alerted to the fact that Trade Me’s front page will be graced tomorrow (for the first time ever) with a video ad — though only if your internet connection is fast enough. Otherwise, we hope you like still images.

Jon sprinkled some interesting factoids through his presentation, including the news that:

Trade Me is now fast approaching 150 staff;

The site served 51 million web pages last Sunday, the highest page count ever (so far); and

Trade Me members write more than a million words every day.

The other speakers are largely outside the scope of this post (sorry Mike, Trent, Geoff, nice presentations but this is a Trade Me blog), so we’ll just mention one presenter who has some past and future history with Trade Me:

Bernard Hickey, formerly head of Digital for Fairfax NZ and now a cottage industry in his own right through interest.co.nz(announced today: now represented for advertising sales purposes by Trade Me); Bernard told us that for most New Zealanders it’s all about interest rates and house values, and shared some fascinating numbers (Kiwi nett worth, $634 billion; value of our homes, $614 billion; mortgages, $170 billion; money on deposit, $90 m billion).

All in all, a useful evening that furthered the digital marketing cause in general, and Trade Me’s in particular. The Tour’s next stop: Wellington.

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One thought on “The Trade Me Revolution Tour Hits Town”

Michael – chuckled at your music review. We’re filming tonight’s effort so our roadie goal of continuous improvement will be evident. I’ll make sure you get a link to the slides and the video. Cheers, MG